The line was a recorded easement. Josephine hadn’t merely given me forty acres, the tenant house, and the grove. She had permanently reserved the lane as my right of way. Because the farm’s only access road crossed my property, her sons couldn’t sell their land to a developer without my signature. Dalton protested, but Winifred calmly explained that Josephine had arranged everything eleven years earlier with an attorney, two witnesses, and a notary.

Then Winifred placed an envelope before me. My name was written across it in Josephine’s shaky handwriting. Inside was a letter and a cashier’s check for forty thousand dollars. Josephine wrote that she knew exactly how her sons would behave after her death. She said I’d earned the little house a hundred times over by spending Fridays beside her when nobody else bothered to come. Tears poured down my face until Winifred pulled over a chair. Then Warren cleared his throat and suddenly offered me $100,000 cash for my land.